Japan in Manchukuo A new threat to the Open Door
in the Far" East be ing made in Japan:* Mr. Tetsuzo. Kornai, the Japanese eminence grise of the " Manchukuo " Privy Council, announced on Tuesday that the new Manchurian Tariff would give reciprocity to Japan' and that any Power which refused to recognize " Manchukuo " would lind the door of trade closed-to it. Thus Japan -propose, to tear up the solemn pledge of the Washington Declaration which promised to maintain the Open Door, and seeks to put pressure on the Powers commercially' interested in, Manchuria in order to extort -recognition. Mr. Komai's cynical description of the Nine Power Treaty' as " aca- demic' is a warning to the signatories of the Washington Treaties that Manchuria is about to suffer the fate of Korea. - The trade involved to-day may not seem' great enough to justify strong action ; but if the Powers permit Japan to pursue her course unchecked they will find, as the years pass, that they have sacrificed an important asset in the world's commerce. Manchukuo is even now no 'negligible -market, and a generation hence it will be worth ten times its present value. At any moment now a far graver crisis May arise in Manchukuo, for the strain between that Japanese dependency and Soviet Russia over the Chinese Eastern Railway dispute has Come very near the breaking point—which means very near open war between Russia and Japan.
* *
Previous page
